Tucker Carlson has accused Kevin McCarthy of being a "puppet of the Democratic Party" after leaked audio revealed the House Minority Leader asked if social media companies could suspend the accounts of some GOP lawmakers in the wake of the Capitol attack.
The Fox News host made the remarks about the top Republican in the House of Representatives while talking about Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover of Twitter, and what that could mean for censorship on the platform.
Carlson then discusses the reports first made by The New York Times that McCarthy asked a group of leading Republicans if tech companies could suspend the social media profile of GOP lawmakers who supported Donald Trump's false claims the 2020 election was rigged after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"Can't they take their Twitter accounts away, too?" McCarthy asked on January 10, 2021, two days after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter over concerns he would use the platform to incite further violence.
During a monologue on Tuesday night, Carlson said that Democrats "favor censorship for political ends" but now some "Republican leaders support it too" in the wake of the revelations surrounding McCarthy.
"Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California told his close friend Liz Cheney that he hoped the social media companies would censor more conservative Republicans in Congress," Carlson said.
"Donald Trump, the sitting president, had already been silenced by those companies. But McCarthy wanted the tech oligarchs to do more to force disobedient lawmakers off the internet."
Carlson added unless conservatives "get their act together" then McCarthy or "one of his highly liberal allies" like Rep. Elise Stefanik could become the Speaker of the House if the GOP regains control of the chamber after November's midterms.
"That would mean we will have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party," Carlson said.
"So you wouldn't know any of this unless it was leaked. And you can start to see why the people in charge oppose transparency and fervently support censorship, on both sides," Carlson added.
"Why? Because the more you know about them, the less satisfied you're likely to become with their leadership."
In a statement to The New York Times, McCarthy's spokesperson Mark Bednar said that the congressman "never said that particular members should be removed from Twitter."
McCarthy also denied reports that he told Cheney he was going to tell Trump he should resign as president in the wake of the Capitol riot as "totally false and wrong" before MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show aired audio recordings of McCarthy and Cheney's conversation in which he said he was considering telling Trump he recommended he resign.
McCarthy has been contacted for further comment.
